Mix of day trips and tours, max 4 day duration.
If you're junior expect to work every weekend unless you have leave.
Touring rosters are not available. You can bid for a line which is predominantly tours but there's usually a day trip or two or back to back tours which make driving to LHR a fag. BALPA are working with BA to see if we can introduce touring lines, but things move at a snails pace where BA management are involved. As a new entrant you can expect to be working blind lines where you don't get much of a say in your roster construction. If you want tours you can get them, but they'll all beover the weekend and be earlies.
12-14 days off per month. No individual leave days possible, leave must be taken in 7 day blocks. It is possible to request a day off after roster publication provided you have enough creidt in your bank to coever the work, but it's at the companys discretion. Trip swaps are easy as long as you can find someone to swap with.
Early starts and late finishes. Earliest report is about 0530 local, with most earlies starting between 0530 and 0630. Latest finish at LHR is about 22:30 local plus delays.
To summarise shorthaul, pretty good roster stability but expect to work hard for the money. 10+ hr duty days are fast becoming the norm, LHR is uniquely overcrowded and stressful in Europe, and it's rare to get through a working day without someone from another department going out of their way to deliberately p*** you off, be they bus drivers, loaders, gate staff, dispatchers or cabin crew. The only parts of the operation (Flight Ops excluded) which work reliably are the bits we don't do - catering, fuelling and cleaning. Oh, and you better be good at apologising to passengers because you'll be doing that every day.